Tag: Olympic National Forest

Constance Pass Views

Constance Pass View 1

These images were all taken within a few minutes of each other from Constance Pass in the Olympics. (outside of the Olympic National Park … in the Buckhorn Wilderness) The one above is looking northeast and shows the west side of Mt Constance (on the right). Constance is the tallest peak you can see from Seattle’s view to the west.

This hike used to be a long one day hike from the Dosewallips trailhead … but the road being washed out now for 20 years or so has added an additional 6+ miles each way to the distance. The valley to the left of the image above is the upper Dungeness.

Constance Pass View 2

The view in the second image (above) is looking southwards … across the valley of the Dosewallips. The image below shows the view looking west towards Mt Mystery and into the Olympic National Park.

Constance Pass VIew 3

These were taken years ago, but I just found them and assembled them into panoramas. I didn’t have a lot of experience with panoramas at that time and there was no easy software fix to assemble them. That is the reason why the images are not ‘taller’. They were a little crooked … and to crop them to keep from having lots of empty space meant that they were wide and short.

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Dosewallips Road (washed out)

Dosewallips Road (Washed Out)

This image was sitting around unloved. The problem was that in color it was BORING. I was going through my past shots and hitting the “V” key (while in LIghtroom). That is a shortcut key for converting an image to Black and White. When I got to this image, I stopped. It definitely showed promise, so I spent the additional time on it to adjust it further (the default black and white conversion is pretty generic). A good reminder to never take things at first glance.

The Dosewallips River road was washed out 20 years ago, or so. This section is now closed to motor vehicles, but makes a great walk. The Dosewallips valley is on the east side of the Olympic Peninsula. It has been closed for years while they attempt to come up with a plan to reroute the road without endangering salmon in the river … and keep the cost down (since to move the road away from the river at the wash out point would be an extensive relocation up the hillside).

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Lowland Woods

Nurse Stump

As much as I enjoy the high country, this time of year there just isn’t much access available in the Olympics. So it’s the lowlands. There are plenty of good hikes that are (mostly) snow-free all year, with pleasant views and interesting features. This trail runs out of Dosewallips State Park on the east side of the Olympic Peninsula. The Nurse Stump was amazing and the small creek provided a wonderful sound track.

Small Creek, Dosewallips State Park
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Spring Flowers

Calypso Orchids

I’m going through images from different seasons, trying to fight off the seasonal winter blues of the Pacific Northwest. These were all from the same springtime hike up Mount Rose in the southeast Olympics. I know they will brighten up my days in a month or two … if I can hold on that long.

Trillium
Yellow Fawn Lily

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Backlit Mossy Trees

Backlit Mossy Tree

One of the things I enjoy about winter in the Olympics is seeing all the moss on the trees being backlit by sunshine. Of course, being Western Washington (let alone rain forest type environment), there aren’t a lot of days in the late fall or winter when you can get a sunny day. This was shot with my Nikon F6 on Tri-X, so I don’t have a color version for you to compare.

But I really enjoy the backlit, glowing green moss outlining each limb of these big leaf maples.

See below for a look at the trail we were hiking.

Dosewallips Trail – late fall
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